I found myself watching Coop sleep the other night. I watch him sleep every night but this time was different. When he first falls asleep, his little body twitches and moves. I've always attributed it to his muscles relaxing and winding down. I have no idea if that's actually the cause but it's what I've always assumed. But the other night as I was watching his little arms and legs move, his hands twitch and fingers wiggle, I wondered if maybe he was dreaming. I wondered if his dream was what was causing all of his movements. And then I thought, "does he dream of walking or running?" I know I've had plenty of dreams about him walking or jumping in puddles or just randomly standing up one day and realizing he could move on his own. Those usually lead to bad days, I spend the day thinking about what he looked like in my dream. What it would feel like to watch him run up to me and wrap his little arms around my legs. What it would look like if he could run around like any other kid his age. It usually takes a day or two to get those images out of my mind. But because of how often I see him walking in my dreams, I couldn't believe I never wondered if he dreamed of himself walking.
It's not like I can just ask him. I mean, I could ask him. But I'm not going to. He talks enough about when he turns 4 he will stand or when he's a grown up he'll be able to walk. I try to be nonchalant about those comments. I use to tell him he will walk someday. I used to say, "someday, when you're bigger and stronger, you'll be able to stand up and maybe even walk. You just have to keep working hard in therapy." But then a lightbulb when off in my head and I realized that by telling him these things, I'm making those seem like that's the only end goal. Like standing and walking are the only way to gauge his success and hard work. I don't want him to think that just because he doesn't walk, he's not working hard enough. The truth is, he may never walk. He may never stand. And that's okay. Yes, I hope with every fiber of my being that he will walk someday. I hope that someday he will be able to stand himself up and take enough steps to get where he wants to go. But I don't want him to think that if he doesn't ever get to that point, that he has failed.
We're stuck on this fine line of encouraging him and telling him he can do anything if he sets his mind to it, and being realistic with him and making sure he knows it's okay if he never walks. But how do you tell a 3 year old he might not ever be able to do the one thing he wants to do more than anything? My answer is, you don't. At least not yet. I don't know if that's a conversation that will need to be had down the road. Maybe that's a conversation we should be having right now. I honestly don't know.
But the idea of him dreaming of himself up and walking around is heartbreaking. And I don't want to ask him about it because I don't want to feel that hurt. Is that selfish? Maybe. Probably. Can you imagine not being able to do something that everyone else can and then dreaming about yourself doing that thing? That has to be awful. I don't want to make him relive it. I don't want to make him tell me about it.
That's something that, for now, we're just going to let him keep in his dreams.
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